Iyer said he made the decision despite the dew because of the trend of teams batting first winning

ESPNcricinfo staff15-Apr-2025Punjab Kings’ (PBKS) captain Shreyas Iyer won the toss and opted to bat against his former team, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Both the matches in Mullanpur this IPL so far have featured 200-plus targets and successful defences. Iyer said he made the decision despite the dew because of the trend of teams batting first winning.There were caps handed out on both sides. Anrich Nortje made his KKR debut replacing Moeen Ali. It was clear KKR wanted to go express pace against a side whose Indian batters have been doing well.In the absence of the injured Lockie Ferguson, PBKS handed out a debut to Xavier Bartlett, the Australia fast bowler, who can bat a little down the order. They also beefed up their batting with the introduction of Josh Inglis to go with their India-heavy batting. Marcus Stoinis was left out.Related

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PBKS are likely to bring in Yash Thakur when bowling in the second innings. KKR had Angkrish Raghuvanshi as the extra batter among their substitutes.This was expected to be an emotional match for Shreyas, who led KKR to the title last year, but wasn’t retained by the team, who were left scrambling for a captain by the end of the auction.Punjab Kings 1 Prabhsimran Singh (wk), 2 Priyansh Arya, 3 Shreyas Iyer (capt.), 4 Josh Inglis (wk), 5 Nehal Wadhera, 6 Shashank Singh, 7 Glenn Maxwell, 8 Marco Jansen, 9 Xavier Bartlett, 10 Yuzvendra Chahal, 11 Arshdeep SinghPBKS bench V Vyshak, Suryansh Shedge, Yash Thakur, Harpreet Brar, Pravin DubeyKolkata Knight Riders 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Sunil Narine, 3 Ajinkya Rahane (capt.), 4 Rinku Singh, 5 Venkatesh Iyer, 6 Andre Russell, 7 Ramandeep Singh, 8 Anrich Nortje, 9 Harshit Rana, 10 Vaibhav Arora, 11 Varun ChakravarthyKKR bench Manish Pandey, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Anukul Roy, Rovman Powell, Luvnith Sisodia